The Corner - Ep. 6

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Corner" - Suave Ep. 6

Introduction "The Corner," the sixth episode of Suave by Futuro Media, delves deep into the pivotal night that forever altered the life of former juvenile lifer Luis "Suave" Gonzalez. As Suave navigates the lingering trauma of his incarceration, this episode uncovers new perspectives on the events leading to his conviction for first-degree homicide at the age of 17. Through investigative journalism and firsthand accounts, the episode explores themes of justice, loyalty, and the long-lasting impacts of systemic flaws within the judicial system.

Background of Suave Gonzalez Seven years after his release from prison, Suave Gonzalez appears to have turned his life around. With a burgeoning career and a committed relationship, he received public acclaim after sharing his story on the Suave podcast. However, Suave's sense of freedom remains complicated, burdened by unanswered questions and unresolved trauma from his time behind bars.

Revisiting the Crime: December 6, 1986 The episode begins with Suave revisiting the corner of 8th and Somerset in North Philadelphia’s Badlands, the very location where he was convicted of killing 13-year-old Danny Martinez. Suave narrates the night of the incident:

[07:17] Suave: “We walking from here.”

Accompanied by Axel Serrano, his young neighbor, and Sandra Quinn, Suave recounts the events leading up to the shooting. According to him, what transpired was not a premeditated robbery but a spontaneous fight that tragically ended in Danny’s death.

The Trial and Conviction During Suave’s trial, the prosecution portrayed the shooting as a result of a planned robbery:

[04:13] “The prosecution said that Suave had shot Danny Martinez during a robbery.”

However, Suave’s account significantly diverged, suggesting the gun discharged accidentally during the altercation. Despite conflicting testimonies and evidence, Suave was sentenced to mandatory life without parole. The only testimony against him was from a young girl, Sharon Benjamin, whose credibility came under scrutiny later in the investigation.

Discovery of New Evidence As Suave and the podcast team ventured deeper into the Badlands, they uncovered inconsistencies in the official narrative. A critical revelation came from an unexpected source: a police report indicating that Axel Serrano, not Suave, was responsible for Danny’s death. This contradicted everything previously known from trial documents.

[19:04] Julieta Martinelli: “The police report from the crime scene explicitly says it was Axel, not Suave, who shot Danny Martinez.”

This discovery prompted further investigation, revealing that Axel had taken a plea deal confidentially, making it impossible to confirm his exact testimony during the trial.

Investigative Journalism and the Search for Truth Determined to uncover the truth, the podcast team embarked on a relentless search for Axel Serrano. Their journey led them through abandoned neighborhoods, dead ends, and unresponsive individuals. Despite numerous attempts to connect with Axel and Danny Martinez’s family, the team faced obstruction:

[29:14] Julieta Martinelli: “After a few more visits to the Badlands... we're out of leads on anyone who could tell us anything more about what happened that night.”

Frustrated but undeterred, the team sought expert opinion from Celeste Trustee, Pennsylvania’s policy director for Families Against Mandatory Minimums. Celeste highlighted a concerning pattern of prosecutorial misconduct associated with Roger King, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted Suave.

Pattern of Misconduct: Roger King’s Legacy Celeste Trustee shed light on Roger King's history, noting his involvement in numerous questionable convictions:

[30:03] Jorge Andres Olivarez: “So many cases that were prosecuted by Roger King where people claim either a wrongful conviction or they claim that there is definitely impropriety on the part of Roger King.”

Investigations revealed that Suave was convicted based solely on Sharon Benjamin’s testimony, amidst a broader pattern of unreliable witness testimonies and coerced confessions in King’s cases. This insight raised significant doubts about the legitimacy of Suave’s conviction.

Impact of the Conviction on Suave and the Community The episode poignantly illustrates the ripple effects of Suave’s conviction. Beyond his own life, the incident impacted Axel Serrano, Danny Martinez’s family, and the entire community:

[34:27] Suave: “Everybody had something to do with it. Everybody, whether they got caught or not, their whole life was changed.”

Suave reflects on his time in prison, the loyalty he felt towards Fat Wilson—his father figure and drug lord—and the systemic barriers that prevented him from seeking the truth:

[12:49] Julieta Martinelli: “Fat Wilson had assured him that even if he did go to prison, he would only be there for a few years.”

Current Reflections and Healing Upon his release, Suave grapples with his past while striving for a semblance of normalcy. He acknowledges the pain and loss but emphasizes his transformation:

[21:36] Suave: “I live with that every day.”

Despite revelations that could potentially exonerate him, Suave chooses to focus on his present and future, illustrating his resilience and capacity for personal growth.

Conclusion "The Corner" serves as a compelling exploration of Suave Gonzalez’s quest for truth and redemption. By revisiting the night of Danny Martinez’s death and uncovering judicial inconsistencies, the episode highlights the profound and lasting impacts of wrongful convictions. Suave’s story underscores the need for systemic reform and the importance of giving voice to those who have been silenced by the legal system.

Notable Quotes

• Suave Gonzalez [07:17]: “We walking from here.”
• Julieta Martinelli [19:04]: “The police report from the crime scene explicitly says it was Axel, not Suave, who shot Danny Martinez.”
• Suave Gonzalez [34:27]: “Everybody had something to do with it. Everybody, whether they got caught or not, their whole life was changed.”
• Jorge Andres Olivarez [30:27]: “An inmate... was told to lie. Roger King is listed as one of the subjects.”

Key Takeaways

1. Systemic Flaws: The episode exposes significant issues within the judicial system, including prosecutorial misconduct and unreliable witness testimonies.
2. Impact of Wrongful Convictions: Suave’s story illustrates how wrongful convictions can devastate not just the individual but entire communities.
3. Resilience and Redemption: Despite enduring unjust imprisonment, Suave’s journey highlights the possibility of personal transformation and the ongoing struggle for justice.
4. Investigative Journalism: The podcast exemplifies the critical role of journalism in uncovering hidden truths and advocating for the marginalized.

Closing Thoughts "The Corner" is a stirring testament to Suave Gonzalez’s enduring fight for justice and the broader implications of his case. It challenges listeners to reflect on the imperfections of the legal system and the human cost of its failures, while also celebrating the strength and resilience required to rebuild a life from the ashes of wrongful incarceration.

Transcript

[Suave]

Futuro.

[Maggie Freeling]

Season 2 of Suave was made possible by the Mellon Foundation. Mellon makes grants to support visionaries and communities that unlock the power of the arts and humanities. To help connect us all [e-mail] When I founded Futuro, I imagined a home for journalism with radical transparency. I wanted a newsroom where I wasn't the only Latina behind the mic. Now Futuro is becoming a home for more voices than ever. Help grow this future by joining our new membership program. You'll get exclusive interviews whole season binges behind the scenes chisme shape the future of storytelling. Join Futuro Visit our website Futuromediagroup.org joinplus ET Not Eva's.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Swave is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

[Suave]

How long you been here?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

50 years.

[Suave]

50 years. Wow. Here, Right here. Because I was just telling them how this was in the 80s, man.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

This was the Badlands. Original Badland.

[Maggie Freeling]

So what was it like here in the 80s, sir?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

There's a lot of money out here. A whole lot. And right there where y'all just came from was Franklin Cambridge. The most out of the three top sellers of heroin was was right through them three blocks right there.

[Suave]

Like if you go down a from Butler, a from Butler was clocking like a million dollars a day. It was doing more than that. Or more round tape, blue tape.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

A cartel guy that was the. Who was the Connector Cartel from the city. And everybody had to come through that way in order to do their dealings. Like he was buying weed and stuff like that. They had to come through that way.

Do you know who that is?

He's from 8th Street. The guy's from right there, a block up from where I picked y'all up at. But that Pacific block right there was one of the most.

[Suave]

His name was Fat Wilson.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

From Futuro Studios and prx, this is Suave, a podcast about juveniles sentenced to die in prison, told through one man's Journey. I'm Maggie Freeling. David Luis Suave Gonzalez was sentenced to mandatory life in prison without parole for a crime committed when he was 17 years old. He was found guilty of first degree homicide. This is his story of incarceration, redemption, and an unusual relationship between a journalist and a man convicted of murder.

[Julieta Martinelli]

On.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

A cold November night. In 2019, Suave, Maria and I and co producer Julieta Martinelli took an Uber to the corner of 8th and Somerset in the Badlands of North Philadelphia.

[Maggie Freeling]

Until now, Suave hadn't really talked much about the night of the murder. Most of our conversations had been about his time in prison. But as we got this far into his story, we realized that in order to understand how Suave's life had gotten to this point, we really needed to go back to the beginning, to the night that changed the course of his life forever.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

What we knew about that night in 1986, at least what we thought we knew about that night, came from reading through Suave's court proceedings. The prosecution said that Suave had shot Danny Martinez during a robbery. Suave said there'd been a fight. His young neighbor, Axel Serrano, had handed Suave a gun. It had gone off accidentally during the pass off and shot Danny. At trial, a medical examiner testified that Danny was shot from about a foot away. But the story Suave would tell us on this trip to the Badlands would change our entire idea of his case.

[Jorge Andres Olivarez]

Right here is good.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Thank you.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

So we get out from the car in front of a tall gray apartment building. This actually used to be Thomas Edison High School. Suave's high school.

[Maggie Freeling]

Can you just tell me what. Jose, you're not saying? Please, can you just tell me? Yeah, okay. What's going on?

[Suave]

Where we at? We down 8th and Somerset. It took place right here.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Right at this corner is where prosecutors said he killed 13 year old Danny Martinez in December 1986.

[Suave]

Right under this pole right here.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Suave says the first thing you have to understand about this part of the Badlands back then was that Fat Wilson was king at the time Danny died. Fat Wilson was one of the biggest drug dealers in North Philly. Hutchinson street, where Suave lived, belonged to him. And Suave says Fat Wilson employed a whole crew of boys, including him and his friends. They sold drugs, acted as lookouts and kept rival dealers from selling on these blocks.

[Suave]

Hussington street was like the hottest, one of the hottest spots that sold drugs. There was hundreds of people out here hustling.

[Maggie Freeling]

Can you do me a favor? Just. Just bear with me and be law and order with me. Can you walk me through your exact memories of the crime? Is that, is that hard for you to do?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

No.

[Suave]

Like it happened yesterday. All this was dull. We coming from here?

[Maggie Freeling]

Who's we?

[Suave]

Me, Serrano and a girl named Sandra.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

That's axel Serrano, Suave's 13 year old neighbor. Sandra is Sandra Quinn used to be my old girlfriend. And she was with you guys?

[Suave]

Yes.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Also, Suave adds, Sandra was the daughter of Fat Wilson. Suave's story goes that the night he, Sandra, Axel and a few others are walking from Hutchinson towards the corner of 8th and Somerset. It's 11pm on a Saturday night, and the Badlands are an open air drug market. Suave says there were many people on the street.

[Suave]

We walking from here.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Suave points to the street east of us, approaching the school.

[Suave]

We see we all together. We see the crowd. And if you know anything about the 80s, you don't walk by in the streets where there's no light. So we hit the middle of the street. When we get to about where that card is at, we know there's a crowd of people right there. What I didn't know was that the person that was going to approach me is the same person that a couple of weeks before we had an altercation down Franklin Street.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

That person was Danny Martinez. Suave says that Danny, like a lot of young men on the block, also sold drugs, but he worked for another dealer just a few blocks over.

[Suave]

So, dudes, call me out. You want to fight? Yeah, I want to fight. All right, cool. We start fighting.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Suave says people gathered around them as they brawled, cheering, yelling. And then Suave says, Danny pulled out a small pocket blade.

[Suave]

He tried to stab me.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Suave says Axel Serrano had been watching Suave and Danny fight from right across the narrow street where he was keeping an eye out for cops. He was just 13 at the time.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Up until this moment, everything we know about the night Danny died, we've learned from the transcripts of Suave's trial.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

And Julieta, you're my co producer in this podcast, and you've been with me since the beginning, helping me scale the mountain of materials. And you've really become like the document expert.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Yeah, you know, and so far, except for Sondra being Fat Wilson's daughter, what Suave's telling us here on the corner about the gun going off when it was passed to him by Axel matches what he had said at trial.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Then Suave tells us something we hadn't heard about Axl, the kid he was walking with before the fight started.

[Suave]

Axl was a flunky, let's put it that way. Axl was somebody that we could use to do dirty work, carry guns, put it that way, because of his age. You give him two, $300, we can move. He will follow you anywhere. Who you think ran these corners in the 80s down here it wasn't no 25, 50 year olds. It was 13, 14, 15 year old kids.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Suavez said it was common for the younger kids in the neighborhood who wanted to get into the drug game to be given the duty of lookout. Suavez says that dealers knew that young kids, even if they were caught with a gun in their possession, were most often just taken to the police station or released back to their parents. You know, at most, they might end up in juvenile court.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Suave says that night, Axl was doing his job. He was a lookout. And the gun in his pocket was given to him by his boss, Fat Wilson. Suave says when Axel saw Danny take out a knife, Serrano come from there. With that stoppage on Axel, Serrano ran towards the fight from the corner stop sign, gun in hand.

[Suave]

And then all hell broke loose.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

We just heard gunshots. Suave says.

[Maggie Freeling]

Who's we?

[Suave]

Me, Serrano, a couple other guys. I can't say their name.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Suave is saying that multiple people saw Danny collapse after Axel ran up with the gun. But he won't say who the other witnesses were. And even though he's implying it, he won't say directly that Axel, not himself, shot Danny.

[Maggie Freeling]

You need to look at me. You need to look at me, Suave.

[Suave]

Well, put it like this. I take responsibility. Like Suave.

[Maggie Freeling]

Oyeme, por favor. Just look at me, okay? What the fuck are you saying to me?

[Suave]

I take responsibility for it, man.

[Maggie Freeling]

Hold on a second. Well, what really went on?

[Suave]

I took a case for people. I took a case.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Suave always told Maria that once he was in custody, he was also offered a plea deal. And Maria always assumed it was to testify against Axel. But this night in the Badlands, Suave tells us detectives on this case were more interested in a bigger fish. The man who owned Axl's gun. The elusive drug dealer, Fat Wilson, who Suave worked for, and the father of his girlfriend, Sandra.

[Suave]

And when they offered me the deal, it was to testify against Sandra's father. And I was like, nope, I'm good. Cause that was the call of the streets. If you were living in the street. That was the call of the streets. If you hang with somebody and something goes down, you keep your mouth shut. That's how I was brought up.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Suave tells us that by keeping quiet, he wasn't trying to protect Axel. He was actually looking out for Fat Wilson. And as surprised as we were to hear this from Suavenow, it really didn't seem that far fetched.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Wilson had taken him under his wing. He trusted Suave to run his block, and Suave was dating his daughter. Fat Wilson was as close to a father figure as Suave ever had. So it makes sense that Suave says he couldn't turn him in. Plus, there were also more practical reasons.

[Suave]

Sandra's father was one of the biggest drug kingpins in the city. So just imagine if I would tell on anybody. Just imagine what would happen.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Suave says Wilson told him that in exchange for Suave's silence about the gun, he and his family would be taken care of. At the time, Suave says Wilson had drug money. And in philly in the 80s, that meant powerful connections.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Yeah, you know, Philly has scandal after scandal. Back then, you had a number of cops and even judges prosecuted over the years for taking bribes and working with organized crime.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Right. I mean, we found that even two months before Suave was arrested, two judges and a council member were indicted for extortion and bribery. And that was the world that Suave lived in.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Suave says that at the time, Fat Wilson had assured him that even if he did go to prison, he would only be there for a few years. And when he came back to the Badlands, he would be respected for being his time like a man, and his loyalty would be rewarded. You know, you have to remember, Suave was 17 years old at the time. He believed this.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

At the time, Suave's mom was unemployed, on disability, and had six children to take care of. And to be clear, we only have Suave's word on this. The man we believe to be Fat Wilson, who had so many aliases, died from a heart attack in the 90s. But we do know from court documents that before Suave's trial, his public defender was suddenly replaced with a private lawyer.

[Suave]

What do you think my mother got $20,000 from?

[Maggie Freeling]

Was he sending money to your mom when you were in prison to keep him?

[Suave]

Yes, he was sending me money. Yes.

[Maggie Freeling]

And your mom?

[Suave]

Yes.

[Maggie Freeling]

To basically keep you quiet.

[Suave]

Well, I don't know if it was.

[Maggie Freeling]

All that bueno, pero, whatever. It was a thank you.

[Suave]

It was a look. I call it like a friend that never forgot me. Remember I told you how my mother used to bring me drugs to the prison?

[Maggie Freeling]

Yeah.

[Suave]

Where you think my mother got them drugs from? Why do you think it was so easy for me to get something in a prison? But I always told you I could get whatever I want in the prison. Remember? I always told you that?

[Maggie Freeling]

Yeah, you did.

[Suave]

It's because I had somebody out here that if I tell a guard, look, I'm gonna give you $500. Go to the ish. I just picked this up. It was done.

[Maggie Freeling]

People knew that you were untouchable because you had taken a hit.

[Suave]

Yeah, and I took a hit for one of the biggest drug dealers in North Philadelphia.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

When 17 year old suave refused to cooperate with prosecutors by ratting out Fat Wilson, Suave says prosecutors unleashed everything on him. You don't have to say names, but how many people know what happened that night?

[Suave]

About 15 people. Even the victims people know.

[Maggie Freeling]

15 people?

[Suave]

Yeah. Even the victim's family know. Right. The ones that was old enough to. To know. And this is why there was never a push. There was never a push. Let's keep swaving in jail. Let's do this.

[Julieta Martinelli]

As soon as we got back from Philly, we pulled all the newspaper archives we could find on Suave's case. You know, and as we've said, at Suave's trial, prosecutors would allege that Suave shot Danny during an attempted robbery. But the first articles about the shooting, based on police reports, never described a robbery. They said the shooting happened as a result of two teenagers fighting. Like Suave says, it wasn't until days later, after Danny had passed away in a hospital after being in a medical coma, that the robbery became part of the narrative. New articles now described it as a robbery gone wrong.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Right. It piqued our interest when we noticed this. You know, you and I were sitting there reading these articles and then suddenly, boom, the robbery. And so we asked Suave. Suave told us the prosecutor charged him with robbery so that he could seek a harsher sentence.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Yeah. And for a while, we were stuck. I mean, this was as far as we could go in trying to confirm Suave's account. At this point, we'd spent well over a year trying to track down records, trying to take these nicknames that we'd hear and find people's real name, running background checks, just trying to find an address or a phone number of someone we could talk to that was there that night. And, you know, even our requests to the district attorney's office and the Philadelphia Police Department for old records related to the crime were denied. We were shut out.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

But eventually, a detective agreed to read the contents of the police report over the phone. Julieta. This just happened again, almost two years later. He said the report didn't list any witnesses. However, there was this one line. Victim died three days later after being shot in the forehead by Serrano during a robbery. Shot by Serrano, as in Axel Serrano?

[Julieta Martinelli]

The police report from the crime scene explicitly says it was Axel, not Suave, who shot Danny Martinez.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Suave says he never knew that report existed. We'll be right back.

[Celeste Trustee]

Hey, I'm Jorge Andres Olivarez, and I'm hosting a new show, Hyphenacion. Unlike many other hyphenated Latinos in the US Our cultures and our communities inform our choices. Like with money.

[Maggie Freeling]

We had that pressure to be the breadwinner religion.

[Julieta Martinelli]

I just think Jesus was what we.

[Maggie Freeling]

Would now define as queer and family.

[Suave]

We're not physically close and we're not like that emotionally close either.

[Celeste Trustee]

So join me and some amigas as we have easy conversations about hard things. Catch hyphenation from KQED Studios, wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

We're back. Hearing that the police report said Axel Serrano pulled the trigger was a big surprise for us. But police reports can be wrong. Stories can change as more facts come in the picture. Yet this was something we'd never read before in trial documents. And because Axel Serrano took a plea deal and was tried as a minor, his case is confidential. We will never be able to know what exactly he testified to for his deal.

[Julieta Martinelli]

What we do know is he was facing a murder charge. And suddenly he wasn't.

[Maggie Freeling]

So what I don't understand is why you're not pissed off, though. Like, in all the years that we spoke.

[Suave]

I live by the cold or the street.

[Maggie Freeling]

Yes, but.

[Suave]

Right. And even today.

[Maggie Freeling]

But I'm asking you a particular question. I'm not stopped.

[Suave]

Pissed off at what? Pissed off at what? I want to know. Why should I be pissed off at?

[Maggie Freeling]

Are you kidding me?

[Suave]

I want to know what I was. I'm supposed to be pissed off at.

[Maggie Freeling]

Oh, that you were charged with murder? That you were sentenced to life without parole?

[Suave]

Listen.

[Maggie Freeling]

And then you serve all the time and you're just like, no, well, you know, I'm gonna con. I'm gonna, you know, apologize and contrition, I'm gonna. But never once the. Never once the street code put me in prison and I almost died there. Like I'm pissed off.

[Suave]

You know, I'm pissed off now. Talk about it. But I'm not even mad. You know why? Because I transformed my life.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Suave's story of someone else pulling the trigger, of the potential of over a dozen other people knowing what really happened. And saying nothing of Suave taking the case in order to protect his all powerful father figure, drug lord Fat Wilson. It's a lot to take in. Eventually, Julieta and I decided to go to the badlands again to try and find Axel Serrano. We ran a background check on him and it included an address.

[Julieta Martinelli]

What we doing? All right. I can't read this map. Is this Cambria?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I can't. This is Frank.

[Julieta Martinelli]

This part of Front street is deep in the badlands. It's connected to a lot of smaller streets. There's littered lots and some abandoned homes covered in graffiti here and there. Young men sit outside on the stoops or they hang out in the corner.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

And so eventually we get to what we think is Axel's block. The street's tiny, more like an alleyway. There's several boarded up houses. One is a lot with just a tarp and a couple of chairs. Each end of the block is bookended by Puerto Rican flags.

[Julieta Martinelli]

We walk up to this red house on a corner. We're not even at the door yet. But there's a foul smell, you know, it somehow seeps through the closed door. It's so strong that both you and I, Maggie, have a physical reaction to it. But we knock.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Absent. Are you recording?

[Julieta Martinelli]

Yeah. Again, no answer. But the street is busy. There are men posted up a couple houses down. A couple others walk up and down the street. And everybody's pretty much looking at us. Red shirt walk past us four times just now when we, we were trying.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

To get to the doors.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Oh yeah, he didn't know I saw four times.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

And we're thinking, you know, maybe one of them is Axel. Maybe they know Axel. The only description we have of Axel is him as a 13 year old boy. By now he's a man nearly 50. We have absolutely no idea what he looks like. So you go over to the guy in the red shirt who seems to be very interested in what we're doing, and you start talking to him in Spanish.

[Julieta Martinelli]

He says he doesn't know Axel. So I ask if anybody else might. And as he turns away, he calls out to the other guys on the stoop who've been watching us, and he says, aqui no vive Axel. Axel doesn't live here. To me, it doesn't really sound like a question.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

We figure we must be at the right address or at least the right block. Let's walk down to front because I feel like that's a safer spot. Maybe it's right here. By this point it's raining and the. The sky is getting dark. So we head down to a main street and call a car to pick us up. And a few weeks later we decide to come back again. We show up to the red house on the corner with the Puerto Rican flag outside. And the red shirt guy is here again, the one who saw us knocking on the door the last time. This time, though, he's sitting on the stoop of the red house and he's eating a bowl of cereal.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Yeah. And there's another group of men who are standing across the street, you know, and they're talking loudly in Spanish. These guys are older. So I decided to walk over and again, just ask them about Axel. And at first they say, no, you know, we don't know who that is. We've never heard that name. So we hang back and chat with them for a little bit. And eventually I explain that we're not cops or anything. You know, we're just journalists. And I want to leave him a message.

[Suave]

The actual sh. I know who you're talking about.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Who.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Who lives in this red house.

[Suave]

It's a lady that lives there.

[Maggie Freeling]

Okay, I know.

[Suave]

You can leave it there.

[Julieta Martinelli]

So the guy says Axel comes around here sometimes, and he actually thinks that the woman who owns the red house might be Axel's sister. So we decide our only bet is to leave a note for him in the mail slot. But the guy with the red shirt is still sitting on the stoop, and he's blocking the way.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

And so you.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Julieta.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I mean, you're just a badass. And you walk over. You make your way up the steps he is sitting on. He does not move or say anything, and you just reach around him and slide a handwritten note for Axel in the mail slot.

[Julieta Martinelli]

You might need to leave a little thank you.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I'm sorry. He doesn't even move. He just stares at you, eating his cereal. And then we walk away. At this point, we're walking towards a main street, and then the guy was like. He was like, look, he's following us.

[Suave]

Shit.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Go down Waterloo. Let's just get the fuck off this street. Oh, shit. Fuck.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Should we stay on a main avenue? This is better.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I don't know. I want to. I want to zigzag. And he has his hands in the pocket of his hoodie. He's not saying anything to us, just following us. And honestly, I can't see his hands. We don't know what's in his pocket. And we get really nervous behind these cars. Just walk on this side.

[Julieta Martinelli]

That threw me off. Well, clearly he lives at that house, so that means he's probably a brother or a nephew and we should hurry the fuck up and get out of here.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah. So we turn onto a tiny street and stand behind some cars for a moment. And at that moment, I think both of us are just a little freaked out, but also, like, did we find him? Regardless, we both felt it was clear that we were not welcome on that block anymore. We can't go back there.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Yeah. The next morning, we're still in Philadelphia, and I wake up in my hotel room, and I have a text message, and it's from a Philly phone number, and it says, I fell in love with you since the first time I saw you. And it's got a bunch of, like, little red rose emojis. So I run downstairs to meet up with you, Maggie, and, you know, we text back, is this Axel? But I never get a text back. So I run a reverse phone number check and find out that it's registered to a woman, But I can't really find any connection to her name or the address. So we decide just to mail a letter to the Red House. But after a few weeks of waiting, we got nothing.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

And we have similar luck trying to find Danny Martinez's family. But we continually get one address that just keeps popping up. So we visit it, and it's his childhood home, but according to a neighbor, it's been empty for years.

[Julieta Martinelli]

After a few more visits to the Badlands. Pages and pages and pages of public records and scouring social media, we're out of leads on anyone who could tell us anything more about what happened that night.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

So we reach out to Celeste Trustee. She's the Pennsylvania policy director for fam, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, an advocacy group that works towards sentencing reform.

[Jorge Andres Olivarez]

Oh, good. Thanks. Good to hear from both of you.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Celeste grew up in Philadelphia and has worked a number of wrongful conviction cases in the city. And we want to talk to her about the possibility that something like what Suave described could have happened. And we catch her attention immediately when we tell her Suave was originally prosecuted by an assistant district attorney named Roger King.

[Jorge Andres Olivarez]

You see his name peppered throughout. So many different cases in the 80s and 90s in Philadelphia that really were suspect. You know, I have looked at some. So many cases that were prosecuted by Roger King where people claim either a wrongful conviction or they claim that there is definitely impropriety on the part of Roger King.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

We lay the whole story out for Celeste. Suave's claims, the records, everything.

[Jorge Andres Olivarez]

I absolutely wish I could say it surprised me, but I can't. You know, we look at all the different cases that Roger King has been involved in, and that does not surprise me at all.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Celeste says she's seen A pattern for Roger King. He convicted person after person using compromised witnesses. And that matters to us here because Suave was convicted on the word of just one witness, the young girl Sharon Benjamin. If Roger King had coerced others in the past to testify to something they didn't see or to lie on the stand to secure a conviction, we wondered if it could have happened with Suave. Roger King was infamous in Philadelphia for the sheer number of murder cases which he won.

[Jorge Andres Olivarez]

I was slightly obsessed with, you know, kind of unearthing as much as I could about Roger King for many years. But I did actually get one response from the FBI that I think you'll probably be interested in, and I'll make sure that I send it over to you. And a lot of it's redacted, but it's. An inmate at whatever Pennsylvania prison was told, he was told to lie. In a court proceeding by the subjects, Roger King is listed as one of the subjects. And so, I mean, this is again in the FBI records. And so in 1987, somebody had filed some sort of complaint with the FBI. Why are people still in prison who are prosecuted by him?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

A few weeks after Suave walks us through Danny's shooting in the Badlands, we get a call from him. He just finished a long shift at the Philadelphia shelter where he now works. Suave doesn't know we've been searching for Axel, and he's got some news.

[Suave]

This motherfucker asked me for a quarter. Can I get a quarter?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Suave was walking into a gas station. He says Axel was so strung out, he didn't even recognize Suave. But Suave recognized him.

[Suave]

And in my mind, I'm like, ugh. But then everything was like, you know, the. He was 13 years old, too. He was a kid, too. It was up. Something happened that it never should have happened.

[Maggie Freeling]

I'm sorry.

[Suave]

Sweat.

[Julieta Martinelli]

Everything we found out about what happened that night, our trip to the Badlands, the conversations that we've had, it all really makes us think about what Suave once said, that everyone who was there the night of Danny's murder walked away with a life sentence one way or another.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

You know, Sharon Benjamin, the one witness at trial. Her name is linked to dozens of civil suits and evictions. A list of addresses where she doesn't seem to stay long. Axel's arrest record in Philly is pages long. In and out of prison, probation and back again, mostly for drugs. And Danny, he never got the chance to grow up, to have a family of his own, to try and leave the Badlands Back on the corner of that first visit to the Badlands, Suave told us he holds no grudges. What matters, he says, is that someone paid for Danny's murder.

[Suave]

I'm sorry I did the time. I sacrificed my life, you know, that's how it goes. But they were all kids, man. We were all kids. All of us. All of us. None of us had no business being out at that time of night on a Saturday in these corners.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

He points back to the corner of 8th and Somerset as we stand on the street.

[Suave]

This is right here. That little piece right here. That little piece right there changed my whole Life. Right there. December 6, 1986. Right there. 15 seconds. 15 seconds. Changed my whole life, man. Changed not only my. Changed Serrano's life. That the victim's family's life, my family's life. Everybody had something to do with it. Everybody, whether they got caught or not, their whole life was changed. It's fucked up that we were all kids and we all had to go through that. That's messed up. That's the messed up part about it, you know, it's like a ripple effect. It had a ripple effect. And at the end of the day, you can't take that back. You can't take that back. Can't take it.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Coming up next time on Suave.

[Suave]

I mean, to be standing on the grave site and to be the one whole responsible for that. Like, I live with that every day.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Suave reckons with the loss of Dani. Suave is a production of Futuro Studios and distributed by prx. It's produced by me, Maggie Freeling and Julieta Martinelli. Additional field reporting by Aaron Moselle, Michael Simon Johnson, Zoe Malik and Zakiya Gibbons. We are edited by Audrey Quinn. Our executive editor is Marlon Bishop. Our director of production and operations is Natalia Fidelholtz. Our engineers are Stephanie Lebeau and Julia Caruso. Maria Hinojosa is the executive producer. Our fact checker is Amy Tardif. Original music from Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Segura. Production help from Lita Halwell, Juan Diego Ramirez, Maya Cueva, Sam Bernitz, Fabian Caballero and Lily Hershey. Webb Special thanks to Marsha Levick at the Juvenile Law Center, David Santi, Suave's lawyer, Shannon Atala, Jill Settlemeyer and Claire Fitzpatrick. David Bohm, our private investigator, Jody Kent, Karma El Moussa and Heather Renwick at Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth. Support for this podcast is provided by the Art for Justice Fund, a special project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and the Heising Simons Foundation Unlocking Knowledge, Opportunity and possibilities. [e-mail].

[Maggie Freeling]

From PRX.